Zuma must go to jail, says South Africa DCJ Zondo

Embattled former South African president Jacob Zuma said on Monday he was not afraid of going to jail as Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo called for a stiff penalty over his refusal to testify in a commission of inquiry into allegations of ‘state capture’. 

Having twice flouted the Constitutional Court’s ruling to appear before the commission, the former president risks imprisonment if the stand-off continues.

Sounding a solemn but determined tone, Zondo said Zuma should face censure from the apex court, which had ordered him to testify — and “should be sent to jail”. Zuma has refused to be cross-examined on numerous allegations of his lead role in ‘state capture’.

Zondo said Zuma’s refusal to bend to the will of either the commission or of the country’s highest legal arbiter, the Constitutional Court, represented a grave challenge to the rule of law. The DCJ said Zuma had to face censure, preferably a jail sentence, or else there would be “lawlessness and chaos” in the courts.

Later on Monday, Zuma hit back with a 12-page statement in which he alleged that not only were there political forces arrayed against him but that the judiciary had taken sides in a bid to discredit him politically. He reiterated that he would not appear before Zondo under any circumstances because he was ‘biased’ against him, though no substantive evidence has been presented.

Zuma was this week expected to testify in response to more than 35 witnesses who have directly implicated him in corruption. On Monday, shortly before his court-ordered testimony was due to begin, Zuma’s lawyers told Zondo that the former president would not take the stand. A furious Zondo said it was “unacceptable”.

Strained relationship

The hard line from Zondo follows a deteriorating relationship between his commission and Zuma, which was signed into life by Zuma himself in 2018 as one of his last acts as president.

Zuma has had one outing in the witness box in which he was allowed to spin improbable tails, without cross-examination, of multi-national and multi-decade spy agency ‘plots’ to discredit him.

He has since not testified further, first offering a series of excuses for missing scheduled dates, including illness, and then finally refusing to testify when his effort to have Zondo recuse himself was rejected.

Both sides having ‘drawn a line in the sand’, it is now a question of when the Constitutional Court will hear the issue — though it may pass the matter down for determination at a lower court, a decision yet to be made — and what it is likely to do.

While unusual, Zondo’s call for a jail term, given Zuma’s repeat counts of contempt, would guide any trial court’s decision. If so, a jailed Zuma would be brought in cuffs to the commission — should it still be sitting, having asked for a three-month extension until the end of June due to Covid-19 delays – to endure cross-examination as a prisoner.

Much has been made by the former president’s supporters of the Constitutional Court’s alleged violation of the law in that it ordered Zuma to not merely appear before Zondo but that he must “testify”. This ignores the fact that Zuma, while being forced to respond to questions, retains the right — as already exercised at the commission by his son Duduzane and other witnesses — to not self-incriminate.

His team says he will certainly resort to that right — but there are concerns that the increasingly irascible and volatile Zuma, now 78, might be pushed into saying things that get him into further legal trouble.

His lawyers say Zuma has a right not to show up, since he has appealed the Zondo recusal decision and is awaiting the outcome. Legal analysts said whatever merit there was to that argument, the fact that the highest court in the land ordered him to appear puts him in legal jeopardy for incarceration, regardless of anything else going on.

Reactions

The commission responded to the two earlier instances — in November and January —when Zuma did not abide by summonses from Zondo by laying criminal charges.

The investigation was completed at least 10 days ago and is in the hands of prosecutors.

The National Prosecuting Authority has avoided public comment on the case, save to say that no decision to prosecute had been taken yet. It is not clear whether all three instances of contempt will be tried together, or whether Zuma will face serial outings in the courts.

Reaction to Zondo’s tough line was predictable, with Zuma loyalists decrying the decision and a group of about 20 combat-fatigue outfitted hard-line Zuma loyalists conducting ‘manoeuvres’ — marching back and forth — outside his homestead at Nkandla in KwaZulu-Natal, on Monday.

Zuma’s son Edward said Zondo was “pulling a publicity stunt” while the ruling African National Congress, which Zuma led until President Cyril Ramaphosa took over in late 2017, has called on Zuma to review his refusal to testify.

Legal scholars said the courts had “no choice” but to sentence Zuma, with Zondo’s jail-time call “almost impossible to deny”.